It’s not a secret that a lot of the fans of the New York Giants want a change – the team’s performances haven’t been getting better from year to year and if it wasn’t for some wins against very bad teams, the worst teams in the league more often than not in fact, the Giants would be on pace to have their worst season ever… Pat Shurmur isn’t a very popular coach within the fanbase right now for obvious reasons and General Manager Dave Gettleman is hardly better off in the popularity race.
But the fans, unfortunately, don’t have much power over the team’s destiny. They can apply pressure and make their voices heard, but at the end of the day the decisions will fall to the team ownership.
The problem, in this case, is that the Giants have two owners. And on this specific matter, they may not have the same ideas.
According to SNY, Steve Tisch may only be venting when expressing his frustrations with the team, rather than seriously planning to challenge the more patient approach of co-owner John Mara, who owns the other half of the team but tends to be the head figure when it comes to making decisions.
In fact, multiple NFL sources have told SNY that they believe Steve Tisch, the co-owner of the Giants, is “very frustrated” with the current direction of his organization and will push for sweeping changes when he meets with co-owner John Mara after the season finale on Sunday. However, others believe Tisch has just been “venting” privately in the wake of a third straight miserable season and will defer to Mara in the end.
Mara, of course, seems more likely to stick with Dave Gettleman for another year – and if the coach can pick up another win on Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles this time, which would knock the Eagles out of the playoffs, Pat Shurmur may find himself keeping his job too if Mara’s opinion is the only one that matters in this.
It’s a dangerous way of thinking, of course. It’s easy to forget about losses during a stretch of winning, but three straight wins, two of them against some of the league’s worst teams, doesn’t change a history of losing over the past couple of years under a head coach that has directly blown games for the Giants with his coaching skill or lack thereof.
Of course, that assumes that Mara will go with a more usual patient approach – by most factors, this is one of the worst seasons in recent memory for the Giants, if not in franchise history. The Giants have a reputation as a patient team, but could that change because of the current circumstances? We may just find out the answer on Monday, when the firings will likely begin league wide for the personnel who just didn’t make the cut this season.